


not quite

by marzipan (orphan_account)



Series: fairy tale nonsense one-shots [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dolls, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-21 01:33:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16149752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/marzipan
Summary: Jim sees Mycroft through a window in the house on the hill, building something that looks human but isn't quite





	not quite

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BorrowedSilence](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BorrowedSilence/gifts).



On the top of the hill was a very old home, and in it, two brothers of the family that had owned the mansion for a very long time.

 

They seldom came down to mingle with the rest of the village, but the family had long been charitable enough, and the brothers unsociable enough, that that was the way everyone liked it. 

 

“There’s just something not quite right about them,” Mr. Anderson said, helping Jim unload his bags from the carriage. 

 

Jim looked up onto the hill, at the old gothic house with its billowing curtains, and thought he saw a man in the window.

 

“How so?” Jim asked. He was a traveling scholar, and it was in his nature to be curious. His plan was to spend half a year in this quiet town, so far away it was from the rail and the sea, so as to finish writing his book.

 

“They…” Mr. Anderson thought about it. “It’s strange, how they keep to themselves. Even when they come into town it’s like they think they’re better than everyone else, the way they talk to us. They moved back only a few years ago - their parents had died, and there had been a fire in the house. It’s restored, now, but it hasn’t quite been the same. As if all the life’s gone out of it.”

 

Jim gave the man a curt smile; he seemed eager to leave, and Jim wasn’t going to hold him.

 

“Strange people are the best kind,” he said to himself, bringing his bags into his new home. 

 

.

 

The kitchen in Jim’s cottage had a window directly facing the hill, so that he could see the flickering lights of the mansion’s top floor as he ate. 

 

He chewed, and watched, and decided he would greet his neighbors tomorrow.

 

.

 

Jim stood before the door for a great long moment after he’d lifted and dropped the heavy knocker twice, wondering whether their unsociable quality extended to ignoring visitors.

 

He’d barely lifted the knocker again when the heavy door swung open with such force he nearly collided with a man.

 

A  _ beautiful _ man, he amended, taking stock of his features. Oddly cat-like eyes, a pale, uneven blue with a smudge of green. Dark, wild curls suitable for a Romantic-era hero. A perfect cupid’s bow. Bone structure as if he’d been carved from marble.

 

Jim held out his hand, and tried his most winning smile.

 

“Jim Moriarty, I’ve just moved into the cottage at the foot of the hill. I suppose that makes us neighbors,” he said. 

 

The man regarded him carefully, before narrowing his eyes.

 

“Interesting,” he said, elaborating no further. Then he turned on his heel, and started back into the house in long strides.

 

“And you?” Jim called out after him, jogging to follow, assuming his leaving the door open was permission to enter.

 

“MYCROFT!” he yelled, voice carrying, in a way that Jim assumed meant it wasn’t his own name.

 

The dark-haired man threw himself into an armchair stroppily, picking up a violin that had been discarded on the floor. He cast his gaze out the window, forlorn, and plucked at the strings.

 

In other words - ignoring Jim completely. 

 

Jim cleared his throat, which also went ignored, and took stock of the room. Medical texts everywhere, including some quite unique volumes on anatomy.

 

Before he could ask whether they belonged to him or his brother, heavy footsteps emerged from the way he had entered. Jim turned around to see a sandy haired man, shorter than even he himself, walking stiffly.

 

Jim noticed the violin stopped immediately upon his entrance, and the man was now peering over curiously, looking the new entrant up and down with feverishly bright eyes.

 

“You must be…?”

 

“John,” the man said, giving him a blink-and-miss-it smile. “I’ll show you the way out.”

 

Not a butler, Jim reasoned, dressed much to casually for that, and not the brother, given this fellow’s newfound interest. Had there been a third occupant in the house? Jim found it hard to believe something like that could get past the townspeople.

 

Jim smiled back politely, and let himself be led out.

 

.

 

Dinner is a stew that Jim forgot to taste, because through the window he saw John sitting beside the silhouette of a tall man. Not the violinist - perhaps even taller than him. 

 

He left, for a moment, walking out of Jim’s line of sight. But it wasn’t long before he returned, with - a leg?

 

Jim blinked.

 

The taller man bent down, and though Jim could only see in shadows and shapes from his kitchen table, it seemed as if he was affixing a leg onto to the not-a-butler.

 

Jim had to go back.

 

.

 

The door creaked open before he’d even knocked this time.

 

Jim steps quietly into the house, torn between announcing his presence and sneaking quietly into the room he’d seen the night before. 

 

As he walked down the hallway, he could see what the townspeople meant. There was something about this house that did not feel quite right. It buzzed with a sort of electricity in the air that made the walls seem to come to life. It wasn’t that the lights flickered, but they bent this way and that, as if sentient, as if following.

 

He took two turns after getting up the stairs, finding himself in a linen closet once before he made it in the right direction.

 

The sound of metal disks and beaten wood rang out from the room in the corner, the room he’d seen from his kitchen table, and he went to it like a moth to flame. He had no excuse for intruding, he couldn’t even think of one. 

 

And there a man stood, in shirtsleeves and a waistcoat, puzzling over his patient’s chest.

 

And, oh,  _ strange _ barely began to cover it.

 

No, not a patient. 

 

“John” was lying on a worktable, but he wasn’t a patient at all - in lieu of flesh and organs, the automaton man had a chest full of gears.

 

The doctor - the puppet maker - looked up.

 

“Hello. How did you get in?”

 

Jim’s mouth opened and closed.

 

“Ahem. You - you must be Mycroft,” he said, catching himself. “I’d met your brother yesterday.”

 

“Ah, yes,” Mycroft’s eyes shifted away, and then trained back onto John, who had been completely still the entire time. “Sherlock needs him, you see.”

 

Mycroft looked up again, blinking, seeming to realize Jim was there for the first time.

 

“You have to leave,” he insisted.

 

“Of course,” Jim said. He had to  _ come back _ . He’d never seen clockwork so advance, automatons so lifelike. He had to  _ come back _ .

 

“I’d love to learn more about your work, Mr. …?” Jim said as the man ushered him from the room. He turned to look up at him - hair a bit lighter, eyes a bit lighter than his brothers, and features not quite alike. The barest resemblance. A slight asymmetry to the face. Jim had to curb the impulse to reach out and touch. 

 

He paused in the doorway for a moment, throwing Jim a hesitant glance, before retreating back into his workshop.

 

Jim took the stairs slowly, not wanting to leave, but not wanting to push  _ now _ when he so clearly had been sent out. He could come back. He  _ would _ come back.

 

The faint sound of violin drifted up the stairs from the drawing room, and Jim follows it down. What a gorgeous E string, gold, unlike the rest. The melody was slowing, the pause between two notes each longer than the last.

 

One step after another, he found himself in the sitting room, just a few feet from the musician that had stopped bowing and now sat slumped in his chair, eyes facing out the window away from Jim.

 

And there he saw it - at the nape of his neck, peeking out from the curls, a small key. Burnished gold, in a half-clover shape. The kind you find on the backs of wind-up dolls. 

 

Jim thought back to the hesitance of the maker upstairs as he pulled his shaking hand back. Without thinking, he’d reached out to touch the key.

 

“What are you?” Jim whispered to himself.

  
  
  



End file.
